Thomas and the Magic Railroad: The True Director's Cut

So, for a few years now, there's been a search for a supposed director's cut to a piece of media. That media is Thomas and the Magic Railroad, a 2000 film made by Destination Pictures and based off of the Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends television show. Since I've always been a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan, I was kind of surprised to hear that one of my favorite childhood movies had a huge story behind it.

Apparently, there was supposed to be a character in the movie called P.T. Boomer, and he was also after Burnett Stone to destroy the magic engine, Lady. The evil diesel engine with a claw on his roof, Diesel 10, was originally going to have a Russian accent and rather than returning to Sodor, he'd be a new engine on the island. Thomas was supposed to be voiced by a man named John Bellis before being replaced by Eddie Glen in the official release. Lily (Mara Wilson) would have been the narrator instead of Mr. Conductor (Alec Baldwin). James, Percy, Splatter, and Dodge would have been voiced by Michael Angelis, a narrator from the TV show, instead of their official voices.

There were a lot of changes made to the final film, and it was all because of the test audiences. Those damn soccer moms got upset because P.T. Boomer knocked over some flowers. "Oh, he can't possibly be in the film! He's too scary!" You wanna talk scary? Diesel 10 was scary.

While looking at some eBay listings to see if I could find a Thomas and the Magic Railroad VHS for sale, I found a tape that was listed as "Thomas Magic Railroad Original Version VHS Rare". It seemed almost too good to be true. Obviously, my immediate reaction was that it was a fake.